César Franck was not a worldly fellow, keeping busy as a church organist and teacher, writing a limited amount of quality music. When he arrived home after the premiere of his Symphony in D minor, the closest thing to a large-scale, ambitious work that he ever wrote, his wife asked him how it went. “Oh, fine,” he said, thinking of the quality of the playing. What he neglected to mention was that the piece caused a scandal, being denounced by critics and other composers for any number of reasons, ranging from the accusation that it kowtowed to the Liszt/Wagner school of modern music, to Gounod’s description of it as “the affirmation of incompetence pushed to dogmatic lengths.” Some even took deep offense to Franck casting the English horn as singer of the main theme of the second movement, for it was perceived as an operatic special effects instrument, not a symphonic instrument! (Obviously, the fools who thought that were ignorant of the fact that Papa Haydn himself used the same instrument melodically in one of his early symphonies.)
But, despite the inauspicious start, the work gradually caught on with those charmed by its straightforward warmth and sincerity, despite some thick textures and awkward transitions. A golden age of interpretations of the piece bloomed in the early to mid-twentieth century, but the piece has since fallen out of favor and isn’t often encountered live in concert. When it is, it is often inadequately conducted, most modern maestros favoring blunt literalism over editorial tweaking. But the great recordings of the past, and a few select ones of more recent vintage, still prove that the work is worth exploring, from its stormy first movement (with unusual double deployment of a slow introduction, to the innovative second movement which ingeniously combines slow movement and scherzo, to the genial finale.
Here are ten (or so) notable recordings, ascending to a top choice, plus a bonus.
Guido Cantelli / NBC Symphony Orchestra (RCA/Sony)
Cantelli was a protégé of Arturo Toscanini, and was widely expected to take over his mantle as a hero of the concept of inspired literalism. Alas, Cantelli died in a fiery plane crash outside of Paris even before Toscanini himself had passed. Listening to the limited number of recordings Cantelli made in his brief career suggests that he would, indeed, have gone on to great accomplishments, for like Toscanini, he had that rare ability to deliver a straightforward performance that nonetheless delivered a blazing conviction. Any number of later conductors attempting the same straight-edge objectivity as Cantelli (Boult, Maazel, Barbirolli, Muti, Dutoit, Chailly, Ashkenazy, Masur, Dohnányi, Jansons) fail to achieve the same urgency. So, Cantelli’s clear-eyed, clear-headed approach is effective. Particularly helpful is that modern restorations have taken advantage of the fact that RCA recorded the disc in experimental stereo, even though they initially only issued it in mono. Despite the early 1954 date, the sound from Carnegie Hall is perfectly listenable, even if it lacks the sense of air that RCA’s contemporaneous recordings in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall displayed.
Leopold Stokowski / Hilversum Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (Decca)
Definitely not a member of the literalist school, Leopold Stokowski was equal parts master and conman. He knew like no others how to conjure intense, luscious colors from an orchestra, but he all too often didn’t know when to stop tinkering with things. As one could imagine, his Franck D minor is highly interventionist, with phrases pulled about magisterially, the sense of wizardry magnified by Decca’s Phase Four stereo recording, spotlit with numerous microphones, and recorded very closely. Given that understanding, it’s nonetheless a grand performance, spacious but never slack, and Stokowski’s burning conviction, even at an advanced age when this was recorded (1970), carries the second-rate Hilversum Radio Philharmonic along on a wave of sheer charisma.
Antal Doráti / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (AD Society)
An excellent but lesser-known version was recorded by Antal Doráti and the Royal Philharmonic in London in 1976, issued on Vox-Turnabout. This was during the phase when Vox was making a serious effort to improve its reputation by upping the quality of recorded sound on their releases, which previously had ranged from mediocre to bad. This golden age saw a series of excellent recordings in the US in Saint Louis and Cincinnati, but this one was one of a very few done in Europe at the same time. Doráti was a wonderfully versatile conductor, and he brings his skill set effectively to the Franck. While his tempos are fairly relaxed in the outer movements, Doráti knew how to do this while keeping rhythms supple and sprung, and orchestral textures sculpted and incisive, avoiding the fatigue of heavy-handed slow versions like Karajan, Giulini, Barenboim, Furtwängler, and others. Though excellent, this version was never widely distributed, and as far as I can tell, is only available currently through the Antal Doráti Centenary Society (www.dorati-society.org/uk).
Marek Janowski / Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Pentatone)
Founding conductor Ernest Ansermet made the Swiss Romande Orchestra known for playing the French repertoire, yet his own recording of the Franck D minor symphony is underwhelming. Years later, the ensemble converted to modern Germanic instruments, and lost much of its character in the process. But the right conductor has still been able to summon a Francophone brightness from them, and one such case came in 2006 when Marek Janowski led them in this handsome recording. Janowski is a literalist, which means he makes no allowance whatsoever for transitions in this performance, which comes across in places as an unyielding stiffness, but the recording is still notable for the bright colors, which include string portamento. Recorded in fine sound by Pentatone, it is one of only a couple twenty-first century recordings to make this list, and deservedly so.
Constantin Silvestri / Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI)
An often-overlooked master was the Romanian conductor Constantin Silvestri. Regarded in his day as something of an eccentric, posterity has begun to recognize the quality of many of the recordings he made in the 1950s and 60s. His Frank D minor was recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1959, and it proves to be highly dramatic. In characteristic fashion, some of Silvestri’s solutions to the tricky parts of this work are completely individual, sometimes giving the impression of a performance with a “foreign accent,” which may bother some listeners. An example is the big passage just before the end of the first movement with a pattern of four descending notes that get louder and louder as they spread throughout the orchestra, followed by a return to the slow tempo of the introduction to grind out the work’s opening motif. Almost everyone slows down during these pile-driving descending notes as a transition into the slow tempo. Silvestri, conversely, dares to take the composer at his word, keeping the descending notes in tempo, then shifting abruptly into the slow tempo with only a quick breath pause as preparation. It’s startling, it actually matches the score more closely than what has become traditional, and most importantly, it works. Without question, this performance is unique. Recorded sound is decent for the period, but this recording was last available in the EMI Icons fifteen-disc box, and may be hard to find in the current Warner catalogue. The later (1966) recording by the same orchestra with Otto Klemperer (EMI/Warner) can be hard to find, but it also offers an interesting alternative view, particular considering Klemperer’s insistence on always making the woodwinds audible. For similar vintage (1958) EMI sound, but with a plain-spoken yet compelling drive, there is also Sir Thomas Beecham’s 1958 recording with the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française.
Seiji Ozawa / Boston Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon)
It’s a shame that Seiji Ozawa was overshadowed for much of his later career. His overlong tenure in Boston did him no favors, as some of the recordings he made with that orchestra indeed show signs of fatigue. But when Ozawa was on his game, he was a highly skilled conductor. One would be mistaken to go searching for philosophical depths in his work, for he was—despite his deserved reputation as a colorist—at heart a classical conductor, approaching music as an elegant abstraction. And thus Ozawa’s 1991 recording is arguably the greatest of all the literalist approaches to the Franck D minor, because he knows unfailingly where to caress a transition to avoid the stiffness that sometimes plagues Cantelli or Janowski. Ozawa also skillfully balances Franck’s sometimes dense orchestration to aerate the textures, here aided by a sparklingly handsome DG recording from Boston’s acoustically gorgeous but tricky Symphony Hall. The DG engineers dealt with it by recording the symphony live in concert, when the hall’s reverberance was tempered by absorptive bodies.
Charles Munch / Boston Symphony Orchestra (RCA/Sony)
There’s much to enjoy in Charles Munch’s 1957 Boston Symphony recording (RCA/Sony). It’s the most prominent recording ever made of an orchestra with a characteristic “old French” sound, secco in attack and bright in color. Munch emphasizes the febrile aspects of the score convincingly, which may be enough to make it a top choice for some listeners, though the recorded sound lags behind what the RCA engineers were able to achieve in Chicago during the same early-stereo period, with trumpet-led climaxes tending to overload and blare. Those who don’t mind primitive sonics may also find much to enjoy in various live recordings of Munch in this work that have gone in and out of the catalogue over the years. Another fiery recording which would have merited a place around this spot on the list was the 1979 Philips recording by the Bavarian Radio Symphony with Russian conductor Kiril Kondrashin. As that is currently very difficult to find, there is an alternative live concert recording by the same forces that was made available in 2019 by BR Klassik.
Leonard Bernstein / New York Philharmonic (Sony)
This is Bernstein’s 1959 recording, ultraromantic and highly dramatic. If you can accept Bernstein’s volatile approach, the performance is superb, though it was never widely promoted, particularly in the digital era, so it can be hard to find today outside of large box sets. Like most Columbia recordings of the early-stereo age, the recorded sound is actually much better than the company’s LP pressings of the period would have lead you to think. It is very much worth searching out in a modern remastering. Much more easily accessible these days is the remake Bernstein did in 1981 with the Orchestre National de France (Deutsche Grammophon). Preserving essentially the same interpretation, it burns however with a lower level of energy.
Gustavo Gimeno / Radio Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra (Pentatone)
As the Franck D minor has fallen from it’s mid-twentieth century peak of popularity, these listings are dominated by vintage recordings. It has not been a work that has fared well in recent decades. Happily, a modern recording has popped up from Gustavo Gimeno and the Radio Luxembourg Philharmonic (2019) that proves that the art of conducting Franck is not dead. With sprung rhythms, clean textures, but malleable tempos, Gimeno offers us a classic French-style performance in gleaming sound captured by Pentatone. In comparison to the older recordings, the recording level is a little low, but a volume adjustment compensates quickly. Unlike most conductors today, Gimeno understands how to clarify textures, yet personalize the performance with emotional inflections. The sign of truly outstanding leadership is that there are a few places where Gimeno comes up with solutions that are different from the classic recordings of the past, showing that his is no mere imitation but a real engagement with the piece.
Pierre Monteux / Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA/Sony)
But, even after all these years, is there any question what recording still holds sway? This recording was almost never made, RCA having scheduled a recording session in conjunction with performances of the piece by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony. What ended up happening, though, was that Reiner fell ill, and the distinguished French conductor Pierre Monteux substituted for both performances and the recording. Though he had already made highly-regarded recordings of the work in the mono era, this was a chance to capture an interpretation of unusual pedigree in Living Stereo sound. For it turns out that Monteux, as a twelve-year old, sat in the audience at the premiere of this very symphony. No one can say for sure how much of that first-hand experience he remembered by the time of recording it over seventy years later, but it remains remarkable how Monteux retains an uncanny ability to make this music speak convincingly, with emotional impact, while utterly without any exaggerated emoting. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was in 1961 the ultimate modern-American orchestra, gleamingly precise and powerful, but with his constant exhortations to the ensemble to play “with fullness, not force,” Monteux altered their sound enough to suit his purposes. The result is a magical classic. Widely available in remastered versions, it remains the top choice.
Bonus
A 1940 live recording of a work with such a saturated orchestral sound has obvious limitations, but there is much to commend Mengelberg’s performance. Despite his reputation for wild exaggeration (earned in his Tchaikovsky performances and, occasionally, elsewhere), Mengelberg actually gives the tempos less pulling around than Bernstein or Stokowski. But where Bernstein pulled whole sections into different tempos, Mengelberg tends to use rubato within sections, while keeping a steadier basic pulse. He drives some climaxes hard in the first movement, resulting in some blaring in the brass, but elsewhere keeps it exultant, but contained. The commitment makes it worth hearing.
